03 October 2004	Sunday	17 Shaban 1425

KARACHI, Oct 2: Molasses exports from Pakistan could come to stand still if the supplying sugar mills do not register themselves by December 1, 2004, and thereafter get final certification of the plant in a year time from the auditors of Product Board Animal Feed (PDV) of Netherlands.

The European Union (EU) in the year 2001 has enforced GMP (Good Management Practice) certification for all the upstream suppliers of feed materials under animal feed assurance scheme. This was done to ensure that every company in the animal feed chain makes it transparent that safety risks in the production process are controlled.

Molasses is being widely used for making alcohol and animal feed, besides other industrial and edible goods. Pakistan is presently the largest exporter of molasses in the world and about 70 per cent of the EU demand is met by Pakistani exporters.

The certification by the PDV, Netherlands, is accepted by most of the EU member states; therefore, sugar mills supplying molasses to exporters of the European markets will have to get certification in accordance with GMP 13(or GMP01/GMP04) at the latest by December 1, 2005.

This year, so far Pakistan has exported over 1.3 million tons of molasses which mostly went to European countries. However, for the first time Indian distillers also directly lifted molasses from Pakistani exporters instead of using third country. In total around 250,000 tons of molasses was purchased by Indian distillers this year.

According to molasses exporters, current world price has scrambled to $70 per ton with average price hovering around $50 per ton. Last year price remained as low as $30 to $35 per ton but sudden demand from Indian distillers who were going dry owing to poor cane crop soared molasses prices in the world market.

In the framework of a specially developed action plan the implementation of safety assurance of molasses from Pakistan has taken place in two steps. The first step was certification of exporters and of the terminals of the port of loading (Karachi) with additional, intensified monitoring (based on risk assessment) by the GMP certified receivers in Europe.

In order to verify the GMP compliance the Secretary General Product Board Animal Feed (PDV) Johan den Hartog early last month visited Pakistan to inspect the terminals at Keamari. He also met molasses exporters and the officials of Terminals Association of Pakistan (TAP).

During his visit to storage tanks at Keamari he was briefed by the secretary TAP, Akhtar Sultan. He was told that almost all the molasses exporting terminals have in principal and practically implemented GMP-13 since July 2003, which was revalidated in August 2004.

He was further informed by Akhtar Sultan that the TAP member terminals at Karachi Port have a storage capacity of over one million tons altogether for non-POL products, whereas a space for over 0.5m tons for molasses has been dedicated at a time. The molasses pumping system from shore tank to ship is considered the best in the world, with over 1200 tons per hour at a time.

In the second phase all upstream suppliers of feed materials, including molasses would have to be certified to complete the supply chain from Pakistan, which will include transport from the sugar mills to the terminals in the port of loading and then the sugar mill plants themselves.

PDV is preparing a general solution for the safety assurance of transport of feed materials from plant of production to the port of loading, applicable in all supplying countries. Starting point will be that the buyer (terminal owner or trader/exporter) is responsible for the safety assurance of transport of the molasses from the sugar mill to the terminal.

In order to get the GMP certification sugar mills supplying molasses will have to either cover the pits in which they presently store molasses or will have to build steel tanks for the storage of the produce. According to experts each steel tank normally have a storage capacity of 10,000 tons and it would cost at around Rs10 million. On an average each sugar mill produces around 20 to 25 tons of molasses annually, therefore it will have to build around 2 to 3 steel tanks of this capacity.